The NYPD is to policing what the New York Yankees are to baseball: a storied franchise. Over decades, the department, the nation’s premier law-enforcement institution, has been the subject of many popular TV shows and movies. For as long as we can remember, a spot on its roster was the most sought-out job in urban law enforcement.
The NYPD’s reputation and notoriety have been the byproducts of two things: the danger of life on New York's streets in the 1970s, ’80s, and early ’90s; and the department’s successful campaign to engineer an unprecedented turnaround for public safety, taking the city from several years surpassing 2,000 annual murders to fewer than 300 a year over a single generation. In more recent years, however, the NYPD has struggled with rising crime and disorder, with officer retention and morale, and with its ongoing effort to build and maintain public trust in minority communities. It’s now up to a new police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, to meet those challenges.
Commissioner Tisch will take leadership of a force whose ability to control crime has been hampered by anti-incarceration district attorneys and state and city-level reforms that will continue to make it easier for criminals, even dangerous ones, to roam the streets instead of the yards and day rooms of New York’s jails and prisons. The city’s top cop can no longer be judged simply on rising or falling numbers in major crime categories; the public’s perception of order and safety on city streets matters, too.
Tisch faces a daunting task, but her impressive and unconventional resume suggests that she may be the person the NYPD needs. Tisch holds three degrees from Harvard, including a J.D. and an MBA, and has accrued nearly two decades of distinguished public service in New York City. She has served, however, as a civilian, which makes her the first NYPD commissioner in generations not to have been a law-enforcement officer. But she brings to this role experience as an attorney and an executive within city government who has led both the Sanitation Department and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications. At a time when the NYPD often finds itself in the crosshairs of anti-police litigators and strained for resources, Tisch’s legal savvy and business acumen could come in handy. And one question she seems especially well-suited to answer is how the NYPD can leverage new force-multiplier technologies—including AI, facial recognition, drones, and risk-assessment tools—to do more with less, given the recent struggles with recruitment and retention.
Time will tell how the new commissioner manages what might be the city’s most politically visible role outside of City Hall, especially at a time when the NYPD is under intense (and often bad-faith) scrutiny from activists and politicians. The department has been mired in an ongoing public-relations war since Bill de Blasio launched his mayoral campaign in early 2013. Onlookers will pay close attention to how Tisch balances the tasks of bringing stability to a department on its fourth chief executive in less than three years, building a rapport with the more than 30,000 officers under her command, defending the institution from its many political enemies, and recapturing some of the ground lost over the last decade, dating back to events in Ferguson, Missouri. Others will be watching to see whether Mayor Eric Adams distances himself from his previous activist record within the department that was once his professional home.
These are, as the saying goes, interesting times for the NYPD. Despite recent declines in homicides and shootings, anxiety about public safety remains high—understandably, in light of other crime measures and growing disorder. The recent triple homicide in lower Manhattan, committed by a mentally ill man with a lengthy criminal history, stokes these fears. The department is among the world’s elite when it comes to actual policing, but a well-funded activist class remains eager to seize on any misstep.
The last few years have made clear that the fate of the NYPD is intertwined with that of the city. Without public order, New York cannot thrive. And if there’s one thing we should have learned by now, it’s that public order doesn’t just happen—it must be achieved, and that means that we need a functioning and trusted NYPD.
This is a big job. All indications are that Jessica Tisch has what it takes to do it well.
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